Primary Menu

Month: August 2017

At the end of July, I received a response from a magazine editor regarding some writing submitted to them last September. This came as a surprise, because I’d forgotten all about it. September 2016 was when I started submitting work more regularly, and many other pieces had gone out to various publications since then. Some responded within weeks, several within months, and one or two responded within days.

When the lag time between pressing send and receiving feedback is nearly a year, it can be a bit discouraging. If the publication you’re submitting to does not allow for simultaneous submissions, whatever you choose to send them is off the table until such time as they accept or reject it, or you withdraw it from consideration. Most of the publishers I’ve considered–and all that I’ve submitted to–have wisely chosen to use electronic submission systems. This is as efficient as their process is going to get.

With such long response times being fairly commonplace, especially among the more well known publications, there is not much to be done about it, other than try to make your own process as efficient as you can. For my part, I’ve been rotating among some faster responding sites and periodicals when material becomes available while waiting on responses from one or two of those that take half a year or more.

Some of what I send out next is new writing, some pieces are reloaded and sent off to another prospective home. This varies, depending on what the writing is. Short stories go solo, poems go in groups of threes, fives, or whatever other number a particular editor is willing to accept per submission. Poetry is still a tough sell, as it probably always has been. But, whether it’s poetry or short fiction, there are any number of publications where a given piece of writing might find its place.

As of this moment, I’m awaiting word on three submissions, putting together the next two, and planning where to go after those. Pieces are moving all the time. Keeping the process electronic makes things more efficient for me, and for editors on their end, but there is still the time between.